i just found your side and it invited me to drop you a line.

We bought the land up on laguna espejo so we are more or less your neighbours now. I would really appreciate to meet you one day in the near future. We want to build a loghouse from september on because now the winter is here and it is impossible to do anything up there.

Maybe if you interested in, we could get in contact.

So far, best greetings and have a nice weekend.
Angi and Guido

Eloísa turned one on May 7 and so far she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed her first year on Earth. She has skipped crawling altogether and is learning to walk, still with assistance, but getting more sure-footed with every step. She loves music and starts “dancing” as soon as a good beat gets going. She seems especially interested in the Blues, with Popa Chubby being among her favorites.

She has also learned a few words; she says “agua” when she wants something to drink, “pan” (or something along those lines) when she’s hungry, and “papa” whenever I walk in the house or room. She also mimics the dogs she hears barking outside, as well as the Austral Parakeets that come into town to eat the remaining apples at this time of year. She laughs a lot, too, which is a good sign, and still likes to sleep all night long, though she prefers to stay up later than she probably should. She’s all but given up the milk bar at this point and enjoys eating out at the Highchair Restaurant. They serve yogurt, fruit and all sorts of good homemade food there. She eats it all without complaint and even tries to share it now and then. She’s a generous girl.

Eloísa has enjoyed visits from her grandparents and aunt Anne at different times during her first year and is always sad when those visits come to a close. She has also received many wonderful gifts from extended family and friends, and though her parents have fallen a bit behind in some very over due thank you notes, she wants everybody to know that she has gotten much use and enjoyment out of all the clothes, books, toys and keepsakes that she has received.

Soon, Eloísa will have to start thinking about spending some time in day care, if for no other reason than to start making friends other than her parents. We sure don’t want her to burn out from boredom before she realizes that there are many cooler people her own age out there. She does have a few friends already, but is still trying to figure out why they only appear randomly from time to time. I think she’d rather have a regular schedule where she and her buddies can get together and pick up where they left off the previous time, plotting against the big people and whatnot.

Don’t forget to click on the image to open the photo gallery of Eloísa at One.

A lot of things going on. For those who don’t know, we decided to buy a lot outside of Coyhaique to build a house closer to town. Work still moves forward at the lake, but there is a ton of stuff to do before we can think about building or living out there, and Elo�sa will need to be closer to schools, friends, etc. So, we plan to build a place in El Claro, about 5km from Coyhaique and right off the road to the lake. It’s got a great view of Cerro McKay and also has a lot of native trees (notro, �irre, coigue, etc). Our friend, Carolina Fernandez, is helping us design a place. Her specialty is “bio-climactic” architecture, especially straw bale construction, so we’ve been thinking of building that way. There are other straw bale houses in the area and they all seem to work great. We’ll use post and beam construction for the structure and the straw bale walls will be non-load supporting. We’ll try to finish them smoothly so that the place looks more modern than rustic. I’ve been cutting up posts and beams with Muttel out on our land for the past 3 weeks or so and we’ve got a good start.

Shawn Strange, an old college friend from American University, was here to visit. We got reconnected through Wendy after Shawn ended up doing a stint at Palmer Station, Antarctica. She’s in Santiago for a year now, and came down to visit and help out at the land.

Elo�sa is growing fast and is already 4 months old. She is very sociable, doesn’t complain much (unless she is being ignored while she thinks she should be part of whatever is going on), and makes all sorts of noises and sounds. She has pretty good coordination and studies things intently. She loves the guitar and tries to play it with me after studying my hands for a while.

Click on the image for a hodge podge of pictures from the past three months or so.

So, Eloísa is already over two weeks old. Time has gone fast and she has gained half a kilo, about a pound. She enjoys fits of screaming in between bouts of sleeping (mostly during the day), feeding and staring at the ceiling. I can lose hours just watching her multiple expressions, most of which she hides as soon as I point the camera at her.

She had her first checkup today and all is well except for an irritated throat which won her some evil medicine drops and a new pacifier. We don’t really plan to lend her the pacifier too often, but even the pediatrician agreed that in her case, or at least until her throat clears up, it’s a pretty good thing to have around. Ironically, I found out that the game of jumping frog, which she stops crying to take part in, is probably one of the things that irritates her throat if played too soon after feeding. All that milk comes part-way back up. Oops, I probably could have figured that out on my own if I’d thought about.

Claudia is healing up and is getting around without much problem, though she still has a way to go before claiming herself fully recovered.

Here are some photos of Eloísa. As always, click on the image to open the gallery…

Oh, by the way, in Spanish, “Eloísa” is spelled with an accent on the “i”. We don’t care if anyone else spells it that way, but I just thought I’d mention it in case it comes out as jibberish on anyone’s computer. You can let me know and I’ll just spell it the Amerkuhn way.

I finally decided on a photo hosting site. Though it’s not all that inexpensive at around US $60/year, SmugMug is well organized and provides all of the features I was looking for. It’s very user-friendly and it will make posting and linking to pictures much easier for me. I’ve already redone the previous galleries and will start posting the photos I’ve had backlogged for some time now.

Here are some pictures of the kayaks we got. I’d wanted to get a couple of touring kayaks for use on the lake. Importing from the US or elsewhere would have been far too expensive, so I searched around and found a guy in Argentina who makes fiberglass kayaks. The guy’s name is Ricardo and his company, SDK Kayaks is located outside Buenos Aires. I decided that if I was going to make the effort to get two, I might as well get four and have extras to rent or use in groups. In the end, I don’t know if fiberglass was the best choice for someone who has little kayaking experience or lives in an area where roads are rough. Fiberglass kayaks are fairly delicate as we found out when we got back to Coyhaique and discovered that two of them had been cracked in transit somewhere. Not sure if it was our fault or the shipping company’s, but thanks to my kayak-knowledgeable friend, Jerome, and a Spanish guy named Diego who subsequently rented a kayak from us, they were easy enough to patch up and will only suffer from some cosmetic blemishes.

We had the kayaks shipped to Comodoro Rivadavia, on the Atlantic coast due east from Coyhaique. It’s a long, hot, dusty drive across barren scrub land, but Argentina is always a welcome adventure. Customs told us not open them until we’d gotten them back to Coyhaique and had them approved, so we’ll never know at what point during transit the two were cracked. Ricardo sent us the paint to patch them up and I got the rest of the materials locally.

The kayaks are definitely nice. They row smooth and fast and are comfortable. Ricardo did a nice job building them. I flipped one on the far side of the lake, luckily near shore, and so learned my lesson about being prepared. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do, but it’s a hobby that will provide good exercise and a different perspective on the natural world, so I plan to learn as much as possible despite the relatively short warm-weather season down here.

As always, click on the photo to check out the image gallery.